How We Sabotage Relationships Without Knowing It

Many of us grew up in households where it was unsafe to be wrong. Mistakes were punished, and punishment often meant isolation or physical abuse. We learned early to make every effort to get it right at all costs — or suffer the consequences.

Many of us were punished by parents long before we were old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong, or what we had done to "deserve" it. But the understanding that we "deserved" punishment was real. Young children see their parents or caregivers as good and right — even when they're not.

Young children lack the cognitive development to understand that the adults they rely on for survival are at fault when they fail to show kindness or patience. The idea that the caregivers, upon whom children are dependent on, are acting out of anger, frustration, and aggression is terrifying to a child. It means the world is a dangerous, risky, uncertain place — and that is too much for young minds to hold.

Young children, instead of seeing parents as wrong, take the wrongness upon themselves. They think that they "deserved" the anguish of physical abuse, emotional abuse, or neglect. They turn on themselves, wondering what's wrong with them.

They can’t understand that their parents’ punishments are a sign of their parents’ dysregulated nervous systems and inability to self-soothe. For children, this is confusing behavior from the people they love and depend on for survival. Instead of seeing their parents as wrong, children assume that the punishments were just and deserved, and take the wrongness upon themselves.

Fast-forward to adulthood.

Those of us who routinely experienced this kind of physical and psychological abuse have trouble forming and sustaining intimate relationships.

It's easy to understand why.

Our childhood templates are that others reacted to our existence with violence and abandonment. We felt responsible for this treatment, because to believe our parents were responsible meant that we were at the mercy of terrifying powers.

It’s normal to take on a deep-seated sense of shame and to believe that there was something wrong with us. We might have thought that no matter what we did, we would always get it wrong — because that's what we experienced in childhood, when we were punished before we could understand why.

It's painful.

And instead of seeing the patterns that we took on, before we were old enough to understand, we turn that pain in on ourselves.

Those same patterns were likely taken on by our parents or caregivers, when they were children, and by their parents — going back in an unbroken cycle of intergenerational trauma.

When children feel wrong for just existing, and like they can't do anything to avoid punishment, it creates a deep-seated sense of shame.

When we were made wrong and punished for actions, where we didn't have the psychological development or self-control to choose differently, we assumed a sense of wrongness as part of our identity.

That shame distorts our development in several ways.

The one I want to explore here is how the shame becomes too much for developing nervous systems to feel, so instead of feeling it ourselves, we project it out and make someone else wrong.

This pattern plays out painfully in our adult relationships, but it doesn't have to. Once we're aware of what we're doing and why, we can change our behavior.

But we must be willing and able to see it first.

One Important Way Trauma Impacts Adult Relationships

One of the most harmful relational dynamics that comes up with unresolved trauma is projection.

Projection patterns happen when we seek to distance ourselves from the shame and punishment we anticipate when we feel that we are being blamed or made wrong.

Wrongness can feel extremely unsafe, especially for those of us with developmental trauma from childhood. We subconsciously flashback, or regress, to our earliest experiences when we suffered punishment without knowing why or being conscious enough to make other choices. 

We feel this inescapable wrongness as a part of ourselves, a part that our earlier caregivers rejected and found intolerable. We believe there is something in us that caused them to reject and abandon us, or descend into frightening physical violence.

Our deepest fear is that, as adults, the people we love will react the same way.

This creates a pervasive lack of safety in our closest relationships. We likely don’t recognize the lack of safety for what it is — leftover patterns from the past.

But we do recognize our feelings of incessant unease in our bodies, our endless anxiety, our people-pleasing, and our performativity during intimacy. And we blame ourselves.

What we do with blame matters.

It's easy to turn it in on ourselves and collapse into self-loathing. 

But we also turn the blame out, onto others. Because we don't want to feel it, we project it onto someone or something else.

Instead of allowing ourselves to feel – and heal — our sense of wrongness inside, we displace that wrongness onto others.

We would rather not feel the wrongness, because it feels like too much for our system. We push it outwards. We see other people as wrong. We see our partner as wrong. We see our communities, our institutions, our governments, and even the world as wrong. Because we don't know how to sit with — and heal — the sense of wrongness in ourselves.

Trauma, Wrongness, and Relationships

Every time we project our sense of wrongness onto someone else, we are trying to offload some of the pain we're feeling.

It's unconscious. We're not trying to be malicious or hurtful. But our psyche believes we can't survive the pain of this wrongness, because of the fear of imminent punishment and rejection. So, we externalize it.

We shame others. We blame them. We make them wrong.

It doesn't make us feel better, but it does give us the feeling of control we lacked as children, when others made us wrong. As adults, when we project wrongness onto others, we feel a sense of power and control. But it’s a false safety.

It's probably obvious how these dynamics impact our adult relationships. Those of us with complex post-traumatic stress (CPTSD) from developmental trauma often don't have the level of intimacy, connection, and support we want in our lives. Relationships seem fraught with difficulty, and conflicts feel threatening.

If making a mistake or doing something wrong causes us to feel existentially unsafe, our nervous systems activate into a stress or trauma response. So, we fight, flee, freeze, or appease others in a desperate attempt to regain a sense of relational safety.

Shaming others, blaming them, or making them wrong is a "fight" stress response.

Every time we project our discomfort in this way, we injure our relationships. The other person feels the brunt of our unhealed patterns, and we damage the connection between us.

Our relationships suffer because we are projecting onto the other person, trying to make them feel what we don't want to feel.

I know this is heavy, but I’m sharing this with you because there is hope.

If you recognize yourself in these patterns, as I do, please know that there is always possibility for change. And the changes we decide to make, in our healing journey, impact our family lineage and help to break the intergenerational cycles of trauma that I talked about before.

This is brave work, and it is not easy, but it doesn't have to hurt.

Every step of the way, we can mend relationships with the people we care about. We can create more opportunities for vulnerability and authenticity. We can create more space for love.

As a trauma specialist, I do this kind of deep work with clients in my private practice. Here's an overview of what the process can look like if you're wanting to do some of this work on your own.

How to Shift the Patterns of Blame, Shame, and Make-Wrong

1. Track your pattern.

Not your partner's pattern. Not your parents' patterns. Not your supervisor's. Not your friends'. Track your pattern because your patterns are the only one you can change.

This is a general kind of noticing, a diffuse awareness that will elevate the pattern to your attention when it comes up.

2. Take responsibility for your pattern of blame, shame, or make-wrong.

It starts with you being responsible for you.

Now that you're an adult, the only person responsible for this pattern is you. And that means you have all the power to change it.

When you're used to projecting your sense of wrongness outwards, it will feel like you are right, and others are wrong. It’s hard to take responsibility for your pattern when you are focused on rightness and wrongness within each argument.

In these relational dynamics, being right doesn't matter. The blame, shame, and make-wrong is what you want to shift. You don't need to make anyone feel less-than for making a mistake. 

3. Understand and love your younger self, who didn't get the safety or nurturing they needed.

You came by this pattern of blaming, shaming, and making others wrong honestly. It was the best way for your younger self to cope with the unbearable weight of shame.

Send your younger self love and understanding, for doing the best they could with what they had. And let that younger self know that you've got this, that now you are an adult, you are going to choose a different and more connected way.

4. Notice how the pattern shows up in your body.

When the pattern of blame, shame, and make-wrong comes up, notice your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. Hold yourself in your center. Self-regulate your nervous system. And don't lash out.

As soon as you feel the desire to enact the old pattern and externalize the pain, I invite you to attend to how it feels in your body to accept your own sense of wrongness, shame, and lack of safety. Feel it. Breathe with it. Accept it for what it is, an old pattern from the past.

Feel your feet on the ground. Give yourself and your past the gift of grace.

Now that you’re an adult, these feelings are easier to navigate then they were when you were a child. They’re bearable. They’re not comfortable, but you can manage them.

5. Consciously choose to create relational safety.

When you've created awareness and space, you can choose another way to respond to the sense of wrongness that’s been activated inside.

You can attend to your needs, taking time to identify what they are. You can share what you need and why you need it, from a place of connection and calm. 

When you do this with people who are used to receiving your patterns of shaming, blaming, and making-wrong, they will immediately notice the shift. They will feel that you’re no longer projecting a sense of wrongness onto them. And it will feel safer to be connected.

Over time, they'll come to trust the new pattern — and you — more, and your relationships will improve in every area of life.

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I know working with these intense dynamics from childhood is intense, but only by seeing these patterns can we heal them.

And we all deserve the goodness that comes with healing.

This is how we shift cycles of intergenerational trauma. This is how we change our family’s history.

Thank you for doing the work.

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